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This is below the service’s target of 99.95 per cent, with roadworks, vehicle breakdowns, staff absence and human error being cited as reasons for bin collection failures.

The service's second week produced its worst figures, with only 94 per cent of bins collected as planned. This meant over 7,000 were missed in the city and more than 1,800 not collected in South Cambridgeshire.

Week 11 saw the service's best performance, hitting 99.77 per cent of collections. In the week ending June 9, 98.18 per cent of bins were collected as planned.

A bin lorry at work in the city

During the new collection times roll out, council chiefs were forced to apologise for streets being missed during rounds. News readers slammed perceived failures in the service, labelling its delivery a ‘fiasco’.

Liberal Democrats on the city council branded the service "poorly prepared and badly miscalculated".

The progress report recognised that the service changes had inconvenienced some residents.

It states: “While the vast majority of residents have had a continued good service through this period, there are some who have not received the service we aim for and have been frustrated by this process.

“We are sorry for any resident who is inconvenienced – every one of their bins is important to us and we will continue to work hard to achieve the normal standard of service and learn from this change.”

Among the problems that have hit the service are unplanned roadworks, a fatal accident on the A10 and three vehicles breakdowns in the 12th week.

Particular issues involving flats have also led to changes being made to the service. The report recognises that more work should have been done to involve crew input and to better communicate with residents.

The service aims to work with managing agents responsible for buildings to ensure crews have better access to gated or secure properties.

Cllr Tim Bick, leader of the Liberal Democrats on the city council, raised a number of concerns about the service’s delivery.

He said: “It seems that there are two kinds of problems. The first seems to be resulting from the distribution of work between crews on the new routes.

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“The second requires a bit more understanding than I have at the moment that some bins, their existence was not even known.

“In a small way I experienced exactly that. I’m talking about a row of houses about 150 years old and for some reason these just got ignored apart from eventual response to telephone calls well into this programme, weeks 9 or 10.

“There was no shortage of time to plan this ahead, how is it that it was possible for you not to know about all the bins that needed collecting by someone?”

He also questioned whether the service was resilient enough to cope with unforeseen problems.

Jane Hunt, interim head of the shared waste service, said that it was working from a “spectacularly good” data set on bin locations and that problems arose from crews getting used to their new routes.

She said: “For the vast majority of residents a continued good service has been achieved. The number of missed streets has declined.”

“We did have some issues with addresses being missed and repeatedly missed and we are treating these as a priority.”

“I’m a big fan of making sure we plan for the right level of risk in the service. For example the heat we experienced last week. We need to plan for extreme events.

“With regards to traffic yes we are on the A10 and we have traffic problems. We do have an early warning system. It something we try and mitigate against.”